


Others

by marzipan (orphan_account)



Series: on wednesdays we kill mycroft [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Other, Suburbia AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 03:32:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15877641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/marzipan
Summary: Sherlock makes a friend.It’s supposed to be a welcome reprieve from his crazy family, but Eurus has a way of seeping into everything and anything and ruining them from the inside out.





	Others

  
  


Eurus floats.

 

She sits atop a big pink, inflatable coffin, drifting from one end of the pool to another. Her eyes are obscured by dark shades, her lips bare, and her dark hair wild and unbrushed, pillowed behind her head. She wears a pale blue, too-big men's shirt over a one-piece swimsuit.

 

The sun casts a harsh glare from overhead. Summer is fast fading.

 

"I am far too brilliant and beautiful to suffer suburbia like this," she says to no one in particular. "I don't deserve to be confined to this mind-numbing concept of what passes for a decent life."

 

Her monologue is interrupted by a huge SPLASH as a small figure cannonballs into the water. Eurus is unruffled, unmoved by the sound and splash of water, letting the coffin drift further left without so much as a change in expression. Her hands rest clasped above her navel.

 

"Eurus!" Molly kicks, paddles, and then latches on to the side of the pink coffin with two hands. 

 

Eurus tilts her head, letting the sunglasses drop forward on her nose ever so slightly so she can peer at Molly from over the top of the lenses.

 

Unlike Eurus, Molly's hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Her yellow bikini is dotted with sunflowers.

 

"You're so lucky you have a pool!" Molly says with a happy sigh, before pushing herself up and planting a kiss to Eurus's cheek. The wobbly inflatable makes for a poor push-off, and she ends up kissing Eurus's eye, before plunking back down under the water.

 

Eurus lays back once again on the coffin, unfazed by the splash.

 

.

 

"Ow!"

 

Sherlock turns around to glare at his sister. 

 

Eurus just blinks at him, wide-eyed and guileless, like she hadn’t just zapped the back of his neck with the charged metal tip of her pen.

 

Sherlock bites back a sigh and turns back around, bitter.

 

There is no reasoning with Eurus. Only bargaining. And right now it looks like there’s nothing she wants besides shocking him to great annoyance—he’s got nothing to bargain with. 

 

Eurus is in his chemistry class because Sherlock has skipped a grade in most subjects, and Eurus has skipped two. 

 

He’s not paying attention to the lesson, not really. Sherlock has been working his way through the textbook, conducting his own experiments, and though the school year has just begun, he should be finished before the end of the semester. 

 

He gets a moment or two of peace before Eurus zaps him again.

 

“Ow!”

 

It’s not just pain, it’s unexpected in its voltage, and he doesn’t know how not to react.

 

.

 

Molly spots Sherlock in the hallway, and she smiles and waves.

 

Sherlock nods in acknowledgement, and tries to hurry up at his locker so he can get out of there. 

 

He used to be friends with Molly - or at least friends as much as he’s ever had them. They’re not exactly close, but Sherlock trusted Molly deeply once. They’re still friendly.

 

Sherlock hasn’t had a friend in, oh, he thinks, about a decade.

 

.

 

He takes a corner seat in English, glad that Eurus is ahead of him by a year in this subject and that he will have an hour and fifteen minutes of peace.

 

The chiming sound of a wooden pencil clattering to the floor, bouncing once, twice, before it rolls toward him has Sherlock opening his eyes. He peers over the edge of his desk and watches the yellow thing roll, roll, roll underneath his desk. Did people still use these?

 

“Um.”

 

Sherlock looks up - then turns around. The boy beside him is straining to reach the pencil, arm over one side of the desk - the kind where the table is connected to the chair on the right side, and he looks like a fool half sprawled over the thing.

 

Sherlock takes pity on him and returns the pencil.

 

“Thanks.” The kid smiles at him, and Sherlock goes back to burying his head in his arms. He read Hamlet when he was 7, and Mycroft read it to him when he was 5, and the teacher has nothing particularly interesting to say. 

 

“Don’t understand a word of this,” the kid beside him says. It takes Sherlock a moment to realize he’s addressing him. Sherlock peers over with some suspicion, only to see the sandy-haired boy shrugging and gesturing at the book like he had no idea what to do with one. The teacher drones on, and the boy makes the funniest expressions trying to follow.

 

Maybe he’s daft, his sister’s voice says in his head. Sherlock gently pushes it aside. He probably is, but Sherlock’s long since learned that’s hardly the most important measure of a person’s worth. Exhibit A: Eurus. 

 

Sherlock feels a text come through via the silent, short buzz of his phone in his pocket, and fishes it out.

 

_ Molly _

_ Want to test those mushroom toxins at lunch? _

 

_. .  _

 

The family has a summer garden party every year, poorly timed to go along with the dog days of summer. It’s not a formal reunion, per se, but that’s basically what it is.

 

Sherlock had managed to hole himself up indoors for the majority of it, but he should have known that if Eurus wanted to cause a scene, not even mere walls could prevent her from affecting as many people as humanly possible.

 

His cell phone rings, and he answers, holding it up to his ear with no intention of talking, because he knows he won’t need to.

 

“Sherlock, dear,” his mother says. She sounds like she has him on speaker. She probably has a maid or a cousin holding the phone for her. “We haven’t seen you all afternoon. Come, come down, show your face.”

 

She hangs up.

 

Sherlock sighs noisily and pockets the phone, unlocking his door to head outside. There’s a ruckus in the bathroom and - he can’t help it - he’s curious.

 

The door is slightly ajar but not so much that he can see what’s happening inside as he passes by, and so he gently,

 

slowly, 

 

pushes it open.

 

There’s a first aid kit in the middle of the room on the floor, Eurus is sitting in the bathtub, Mycroft physically holding her down and off balance as she tries to kick him, while his brother’s boyfriend seems to have been shoved into the corner behind the door, and Molly standing by the first aid kit just looks absolutely livid.

 

“ _ SHUT UP! _ ” she screams, and he’s never heard her even remotely so angry. “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!”

 

Even Eurus looks taken aback, and Sherlock notices in the stunned silent aftermath that there is blood on Eurus’s mouth. He can see via the mirror that Jim has a black eye and a cut on his forehead. Molly’s hands are red and shaking. There’s blood on  Mycroft’s shirt, but it doesn’t seem to be his.

 

Sherlock slowly closes the door.

 

. .  

 

Sherlock stares at the text for a bit, thinking it over. Molly and Eurus had had a screaming fight two weeks ago, but they seem fine now. This isn’t taking sides. This is fine. 

 

_ Me _

_ I’ll see you at the lab. _

 

.

 

Sherlock bypasses the school cafeteria and heads back toward the chemistry labs. 

 

“Hey,” he greets Molly, she’s the only one in the lab, and drops his backpack on a lab stool behind the table they’ll be working at. It’s convenient Molly has a key.

 

She smiles broadly at him, goggles and gloves already on, and hands him his own pair.

 

He takes it, and fishes out the journal from his backpack where they’ve been recording their findings. 

 

Molly never complains about the smell of the decayed specimen they work on. That’s another thing he likes about her.

 

They work in companionable quiet, not silence. There’s a ‘pass me this’ and ‘what do you think of that’ and little jokes in between as they work. They often surprise each other with outlandish questions neither can answer that lead to further experiments. 

 

“You know,” Molly says.

 

“Hm?”

 

“I used to have a crush on you,” Molly continues nonchalantly.

 

Sherlock recoils so hard he nearly trips backwards over a chair.

 

Molly sees his shock and laughs, not understanding the extent of it. 

 

“Oh, just briefly,” she says. “It barely lasted a day. Remember? We had biology together for homeroom and I thought you were so clever. And then afterward” - her voice slows as she reminisces - “I remember I saw you in the hallway.”

 

“I waved to you, and then - it was like seeing double.”

 

She referring to Eurus sneaking up behind Sherlock at his locker. Sherlock remembers the scene, albeit differently, because he’d seen Molly wave, and then before he could respond he got kneed in the back of his thigh, nearly sending him off balance. 

 

“Who’s that?” Eurus had asked him, voice mocking, peeking out from behind him.

 

That was when Molly and Eurus first laid eyes on each other. 

 

“Mmhm,” Molly says, nostalgic. “I saw your sister, and I was a goner.”

 

Sherlock braces himself against the table, heart pounding. Oh, thank God. If she had been referring to anything else  _ he _ would have been a goner. 

 

He - he doesn’t think he could stomach what she’s putting Mycroft through, and Mycroft hadn’t even  _ known _ .

 

Just a few days ago, Mycroft’s last day before he left again for university, the entire family had sat down for dinner, and Eurus stomped in late, dragging behind her a covered canvas as tall as herself.

 

She unveiled it with flourish mid-meal, and their parents stopped eating to survey her work. 

 

It was a beautifully realistic human body - everyone always said Eurus was a prodigy - though from what Sherlock could glean she didn’t care much for painting, not more or less than anything else. 

 

On a dark, murky background, she had painted their own brother Mycroft. Nude. With his heart cut out and tumbling from his hands. The open wound was terrifyingly realistic.

 

“Oh, is that your latest, Eurus?” their mother had asked, tone encouraging, as if she couldn’t see the blatant resemblance to her own son.

 

“Good use of light,” their father said after an assessing beat, “though the color palette will clash with the carpets. We can’t hang it up.”

 

Mycroft had just calmly excused himself from the table, but Sherlock couldn’t move. He found his legs had locked, his arms too, and he couldn’t get up. He just stared at the meat and vegetables on his plate until it was taken away, trying not to see veins and flesh in the food. 

 

“Sherlock?” He vaguely hears Molly calling after him. “Sherlock? Where are you going?”

 

.

 

Sherlock rounds the corner too fast and ends up colliding into a much shorter kid behind the science building.

 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, yeesh,” he says, and Sherlock peers down. Same voice. The boy from English class. 

 

Sherlock tries to respond, but he thinks what comes out instead is a shaky breath that doesn’t quite take in as much air as he really needs. Oh no. He doesn’t want to start hyperventilating.

 

He takes a quick step back away from the boy and plasters his back against the wall of the building, staring straight out at nothing off in the distance as he gulps greedily for air. 

 

“Hey,” the boy asks again.

 

Are you still there? his sister’s voice snaps in his head. Sherlock himself says nothing, because his lungs aren’t quite up for it yet. 

 

“Are you okay?” the boy asks.

 

“My sister is crazy,” is the first thing Sherlock manages. 

 

The boy stares for a second, then laughs a bit. “Yeah, siblings can be rough. I’m lucky Harry graduated just as I started here. Why, what grade is your’s in?”

 

“We’re in the same grade,” Sherlock says.

 

“Awful,” the boy says. Sherlock nods solemnly.

 

“I’m John.”

 

Sherlock looks down at the proffered hand for - too long, he knows that. He seems nice. He doesn’t deserve whatever hell Eurus might choose to inflict on him. But Sherlock is so tired.

 

He takes it.

 

It's something she's trained him not to do - not to ask for help. Scheme and plot all you like, but others are mere pawns - never allies. These were games they played between siblings, and there was no place for the others. Just you and me, he hears her say, no one to help you, no one is going to stop me.

 

“Sherlock,” he says, loud enough to drown out her voice in his head. 

 

“Cool,” the boy - John - says. He blinks. “Unusual name.”

 

“Our parents are nutters,” Sherlock sighs. “Mycroft, Sherlock, Eurus.”

 

“Um. Which one’s the sister?”

 

“Eurus. Steer clear of her,” Sherlock warns casually.

 

“Good note.”

 

He slides down the wall of the building, not caring that the brick is likely ruining his shirt, and then the two of them sit on adjacent edges of the building corner, looking out at nothing in particular. 

 

“Twins, then?” John asks out of nowhere.

 

Sherlock winces. “No, she’s just skipped grades,” he answers.

 

“Ah.”

 

The boy rummages around in his backpack, and Sherlock peers over curiously only to find a plastic-wrapped sandwich half shoved in his face. 

 

“Did you eat yet?” the boy asks. Sherlock takes the sandwich, shaking his head. He’s not sure he could.

 

“It’s just peanut butter,” the boy says. 

 

Sherlock gives him a funny look as he chews. The sandwich clearly was not something the boy made, nor a lunch packed that he brought to school on his own. He’d eaten in the cafeteria and now was taking refuge outside, hiding from - 

 

He hits the brakes on that train of thought. He doesn’t want to become Mycroft, and he definitely doesn’t want to become Eurus. He doesn’t want to become so paranoid, as the two of them were. (And fear of Eurus was not paranoia, he reminded himself, it was a healthy sense of self-preservation.)

 

“Did you make this?” Sherlock asks instead.

 

“Um. No, well, this is embarrassing, but see Ellen - she’s in our English class actually -”

 

Sherlock squints, trying to recall. An auburn-haired girl with the bow in her hair. She’d turned around and smiled at John as they were getting seated in the morning. She - oh.

 

“- and she wanted to have lunch together. I’d forgotten, to be honest, I didn’t think much of it, didn’t think she was serious -”

 

So John was popular with girls, Sherlock notes. He nods as he chews, half-listening to John ramble about nothing of real substance, but feeling comforted by it nonetheless.

 

.

 

“John, do you like mold?”

 

“Nnnnno….” John peers over his own homework to make a face at Sherlock, who has his own head buried in a book.

 

“Pity, I’ve been doing experiments on culture growth in the lab after school and I need an assistant,” Sherlock says. He’s baffled when John just smiles good naturedly and offers to help anyway.

 

They’ve been meeting up at lunch, half the time in odd places, because it seems that John actually gets into quite a bit of trouble despite his sunny, warm exterior. They do homework in proximity of each other after school. Once they walked together taking a very long way home so they could check out the abandoned train tracks where Sherlock had heard rumors of a dead body (they did not find one). 

 

Sherlock’s hesitant to call it hanging out, but it’s essentially what they’re doing. 

 

It’s nice, to have attention he doesn’t have to trade and barter for while worrying that it might violate some unspoken code. 

 

It lulls him into a false sense of security.

 

.

 

Sherlock jerks awake, scrambling back so hard he slams his head against the headboard and winces.

 

Eurus had been just an inch away from his face, breathing down on him as he slept, hair hanging over and tickling his face, until he woke.

 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Eurus,” he hisses. The room’s a mess - though, granted, it was messy before, but he had had an order to things. She’s rifled through every drawer and upturned his methodical piles of laundry and there are books on the floor that he knows were piled on the desk before.

 

“Morning, Sherlock,” she said, taking a bouncing seat on the mattress beside him. “Haven’t talked to you in a while, thought we’d catch up.”

 

“I have it on good authority that teenagers my age find little sisters gross and a terrible menace and there is no reason we should be friends,” Sherlock replies drolly, trying not to let her notice he’s trying to edge away.

 

“Is this because,” she continues loudly, not just ignoring his words but drowning them out, “you’ve made a new friend?”

 

Sherlock goes silent.

 

“Hm?”

 

He glares at her. She won’t stop bouncing. 

 

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

 

He scoffs. It’s a bluff. “Why would I want to do that?”

 

Eurus stares at him for a long moment, eyes sharp and face blank. He has no idea what she’s thinking.

 

A moment later she jumps off the bed. 

 

“Fine,” she says. “Probably won’t last long anyway. You’re not exactly sociable.”

 

The irony of it was that between the two of them, Sherlock was known as the moody one, and Eurus was actually quite popular, with a wide circle of friends (admirers) at school. 

 

She flounces out of his room, leaving the door wide open, and he crawls out of bed.

 

.

 

Sherlock spends all of English class staring at his phone. The contacts are open, and he has Molly’s number highlighted.

 

“Pst. Sherlock. Are you alright?” 

 

Sherlock gives John a cursory glance.

 

“Fine.”

 

“You don’t seem fine.”

 

John’s right, he’s not. So he doesn’t say anything at all.

 

He doesn’t text Molly.

 

They’re leaving the classroom when John grabs on to his sleeve and tugs him aside in the hallway, before punching him lightly on the shoulder.

 

“You’re acting really weird,” John says.

 

Sherlock has decided against roping Molly into some scheme to distract his sister enough to forget about toying with him for the fun of it. He doesn't like the idea of using Molly as a pawn, even if Eurus might see her as one. And Eurus only ever toys with him when she’s bored (which, unfortunately, can happen quite easily).

 

“Can I stay with you for a few days?” Sherlock blurts out instead. It would give him until class elections began, and Eurus would be preoccupied with her power grab.

 

“What?” John’s not sure he heard him correctly.

 

“I think my sister is going to murder me if she sees me around the next, four days or so,” Sherlock explains unhelpfully.

 

“Um. Yeah, I guess. It’s probably okay.” John gives him a half shrug. “Okay.”

 

Sherlock nods in gratitude. 


End file.
